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HealthRise: An Approach to Help People Survive Treatable Chronic Diseases

Highlights

Many people are at risk for heart attacks, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases

HealthRise, managed by Abt, is funding pilot projects to determine the best way to tackle these diseases.

HealthRise is enabling those with these chronic diseases to manage their conditions.

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The Challenge

Heart attacks, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases kill an astounding 100,000 people every day. Many people don’t know they even have these life threatening conditions or can’t get treatment. High health costs and shortages of providers and medicine often stand in the way of saving lives. As countries increase their national incomes and eat more of the sugar-filled, artery-clogging foods popular in the developed world, this societal pandemic spawns an upwardly spiraling death rate.

The Approach

HealthRise is using community-based grants to fund pilot projects in India, the U.S., South Africa, and Brazil to determine the best way to tackle these diseases. Quantitative and qualitative assessments inform the grants by identifying key barriers to care, service-delivery gaps, and opportunities within communities. Abt coordinates HealthRise global and country-level programs.

During implementation, the HealthRise team manages and monitors interventions and provides technical assistance. Technical meetings and events ensure routine information sharing and peer-to-peer learning. Country advisory committees made up of academia, policymakers, the private sector, patients, and frontline healthcare providers guide project implementation.

The Results

The project explains warning signs to patients, makes sure they stay on their medication, and helps them track their progress. The project builds the skills of caregivers and frontline health workers. The project advances policies to increase the screening, diagnosis, management, and control of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes for underserved populations. The goal: enable those with these chronic diseases to manage their condition so that they can survive over the long term. The HealthRise evaluation team performs an impact assessment of the demonstration projects, which will provide lessons learned for future programs.